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Abortion rights shouldn’t be at the mercy of the judiciary. We need federal legislation codifying Roe v. Wade — and Democrats need to buck up and eliminate the filibuster to pass it.
The three judges who support abortion rights were reduced to appealing to the court’s reputation. “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked early in the hearing.
Chief Justice John Roberts, perhaps the only anti-abortion justice concerned with preserving the court’s legitimacy, querulously noted that only the fifteen-week ban, not banning abortion as a whole, was before the court. The five other hard-right appointees clearly don’t care.
That distinction is technical anyway. The Mississippi law bans abortion at and after fifteen weeks, but if the court rubber-stamps the law, it will break up the legal regime set up by Roe v. Wade and later decisions that prevents states from substantially hampering access before viability, now twenty-two to twenty-four weeks. If the court blows away that standard, anti-abortion state governments can argue that any pre-viability ban is allowable.
The cautious route would be to leave the Mississippi law intact and let other states appeal their six-week bans and outright bans. But aside from Roberts, the court’s anti-abortion majority appears to have no interest in gradualism.
If the court allows outright bans, those laws will immediately go into effect in twenty-one states. In the South, only Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia have no post-Roe bans in place. According to a Guttmacher Institute analysis, twenty-six states are “certain or likely” to ban abortion if the court permits it.
With the situation sharpening into focus, it’s tempting to feel hopeless. But despair isn’t an option. Instead, we should think more creatively and expansively about how to secure and protect abortion access throughout the country, beginning with the question of why our abortion rights are at the mercy of the judiciary in the first place.
Mercy of the Court
In response to an outpouring of women’s liberation demands, the New York State Legislature legalized abortion on demand in 1970. Organizers expected the law would eventually be mirrored by federal legislation. Instead, in 1973, we got Roe v. Wade, a sweeping decision that invalidated state statutes around the country that had outlawed abortion since the 1860s.
But the court also provided several avenues to restrict abortion services, starting with approval of the Hyde Amendment. This appropriations rider banned federal funds going to abortion, cutting abortion access to those covered by Medicaid. Medicaid paid for three hundred thousand abortions a year from 1973 to 1976. After Hyde went into effect, it covered just a handful. Now an abortion procedure costs $530 on average.
More recently, right-wing state legislatures have been outdoing each other in creating roundabout ways to make abortions harder to get. They’ve been zapping clinics with draconian requirements and forcing staff into bureaucratic catch-22s; they’ve been mandating that doctors recite lies to their patients and requiring unnecessary ultrasounds and onerous waiting periods. Occasionally, a restriction will end up before the Supreme Court, which will render judgment: yes to parental consent, yes to waiting periods, no to the D…X abortion ban, then yes to the D…X ban, no to impossible-to-meet clinic restrictions, and so on.
It’s a bizarre way to regulate a medical procedure that 30 percent of women need. It didn’t have to be this way: Democratic Congresses could have passed legislation protecting abortion rights starting in the 1970s. Leaving abortion up to the court has been a political decision — a disastrous one that has finally reached a dead end.
In September, the US House passed the Women’s Health Protection Act on a party-line vote. The law would provide for the right to abortion before viability all over the country, codifying Roe. It hasn’t been considered in the Senate yet, and certainly won’t pass without Democrats changing the filibuster rule. In response to the Supreme Court hearing, Bernie Sanders stated, “We must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade. . . . And if there aren’t sixty votes to do it, and there are not, we must reform the filibuster to pass it with fifty votes.”
Couldn’t the court just strike the new law down? Abortion was largely legal in the United States from its founding until after the Civil War. There were state laws to prosecute practitioners who killed their patients through incompetence. But until “quickening,” when the fetus can be felt to move, around eighteen or twenty weeks, abortion was unregulated. So it would be hard for judges — especially your originalists — to argue that there is something in the Constitution outlawing abortion.
This is why adding a “human life amendment” to the Constitution has been on the agenda of the Right for decades. It’s one thing to argue about whether the Constitution contains a privacy right that includes abortion: the Roe court said it did, this court will say it doesn’t. But it would be another thing to argue that something in the Constitution allows states to override federal legislation in order to force all pregnancies be carried to term.
The legislative route has always been a possible strategy for the abortion rights movement, and current events suggests it would have had advantages over the judicial route. With the Supreme Court strategy facing imminent defeat, it’s time to finally change course.
Pass the Act
All that said, abortion rights are not going to be won or lost through established channels alone, judicial or legal or otherwise.
As in earlier eras, abortion is part of the struggle of the great majority to control our lives. In the 1960s, the women’s liberation movement was strong, radical, and critical of the liberal power structure. The US establishment was gripped by a bipartisan panic over high birth rates while contending with socialist societies that provided free abortions in hospitals, while US women were forced into back alleys for extortionate prices.
Now there is establishment panic about low birth rates, the lowest in US history. And feminist organizations are largely tied to corporate foundations and a Democratic Party that provides a veneer of feminism through the professional advancement of select women. Female faces in high places have largely failed to advance freedom for women as a whole. They’ve left our reproductive working conditions — childcare, health care, paid leave, wages, union rights, and work hours — to the tender mercies of the private sector. Our private health insurance system means we pay the costs of birth control, abortion, and childbearing out of our meager pay. Real freedom lies in guaranteed health care that covers everything, and an economic system arranged to maximize human flourishing.
What has been the Democratic Party establishment’s response to the court at this dangerous juncture? They’ve been gloating about the possible effect of a summer court decision on the midterm elections. “ELECT DEMOCRATS TO PROTECT ABORTION RIGHTS,” blared the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Twitter. Their strategy has gone from “Vote for us to save the court” to “Vote for us so we can save you from the court.” These Democrats apparently believe further immiseration of voters will lead to loyalty to their party. It doesn’t, as demonstrated by four decades of voter immiseration and resulting detachment from either party.
It’s time for the Democratic establishment to put its money — considerable amounts of which have been raised on pro-choice messaging — where its mouth is. We know that the court is going to allow states to ban abortion because it already has in Texas. Many people will be forced to have children they do not want and cannot afford while Democratic Party higher-ups use our desperation to polish their brand.
The Women’s Health Protection Act would stop the bleeding. The time to pass it is now.
Prosecutors said Monday they expect their "case in chief" against Steve Bannon to last only a day. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
A federal grand jury returned an indictment last month against Bannon over his defiance of a congressional subpoena demanding that he testify and turn over documents as part of the House investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol. At an early court hearing, prosecutor Amanda Vaughn described the case as "very straightforward" as Bannon's defense team resisted the Justice Department's push to set a trial date.
In Monday's filing, prosecutors predicted that their "case-in-chief will consist of one day of testimony." Bannon's defense lawyers said their "best estimate" was that the trial would last about 10 days.
Prosecutors also asked for the trial to begin no later than April 15. Bannon's defense team suggested a date six months later, October 17, asserting that the "average life of a criminal case" in the District of Columbia's federal trial court is about one year.
"In our view, this is not the average criminal case on the docket – because it will take more time to obtain discovery, and more time to fully brief the issues," Bannon's defense lawyers said.
The court filing further illuminated the divide between Bannon's defense and prosecutors over the pace of the proceedings, in a prosecution that House lawmakers hope will deter would-be recalcitrant witnesses from snubbing the select committee investigating the Capitol attack and buildup to January 6. The brief came a day before a second hearing before Judge Carl Nichols, a 2019 appointee to the federal trial court in Washington, DC, who was randomly assigned Bannon's case.
The Justice Department had gone decades without bringing a contempt of Congress prosecution. But the department ended that years-long drought with Bannon, who asserted executive privilege even though he hadn't served in the Trump administration since 2017.
In announcing Bannon's indictment, Attorney General Merrick Garland stressed that it was not motivated by politics, saying the Justice Department "adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law."
Last week, the nine-member committee voted unanimously to recommend criminal contempt charges against Jeffrey Clark, a former top Trump appointee at the Justice Department, over his refusal to cooperate with the investigation. The House committee moved forward with the vote a day after Clark came back and communicated, through his lawyer, that he would be invoking his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Clark's 11th-hour move has staved off, at least for now, a full House vote to hold him in contempt and refer him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution.
"As with Mr. Bannon, the Select Committee has no desire to be placed in this situation but Mr. Clark has left us no other choice," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the January 6 committee, at a meeting last week. "He chose this path. He knew what consequences he might face if he did so."
Clark was initially scheduled to appear before the committee on Saturday to formally assert his 5th Amendment claim. But the hearing was postponed to December 16 after Clark's attorney told lawmakers his client had a medical condition precluding his appearance.
Trump, for his part, has repeatedly urged his associates not to comply with the select committee's investigation. He also filed a lawsuit to prevent the National Archives from turning records over to the House committee.
A federal judge rejected Trump's bid to block the Biden administration from handing over the records. Trump's lawyers challenged the ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the DC, where a three-judge panel seemed equally skeptical of his claim that he can invoke executive privilege post-presidency and overrule the decision of the incumbent.
Joe Biden. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Rebalancing the courts was always going to be a challenge for President Biden. When he took over, 30 percent of active federal judges had been appointed by Trump. He also had just 49 federal court vacancies to fill at that point — less than half the number that Trump started with. But Biden campaigned on offsetting Trump’s conservative stamp by nominating judges from diverse backgrounds, and he’s gotten more judicial nominees confirmed through the Senate than any president at this point in his first term in decades. Almost half of the 61 judges he’s nominated to the lower courts have been confirmed — a larger share than Trump or former President Barack Obama — although there’s been far less consensus in the Senate about Biden’s picks.
But perhaps even more significantly, Biden has delivered on his promise of diversity in a big way. According to our analysis, the vast majority of the judges who have been confirmed under his presidency are women or people of color. And the judges he’s named to the courts also have nontraditional professional backgrounds. They’re more likely than past crops of judges to come from fields like advocacy and academia, and more likely to have worked as public defenders than as prosecutors.
Biden’s appointees aren’t diverse on every metric, though. We found that his judges are more likely to have attended the country’s most prestigious universities and law schools than judges appointed by past presidents. That turn to the elite is especially noteworthy, given that Biden’s ticket was the first Democratic ticket since 1984 to feature two candidates who didn’t graduate from an Ivy League school.
The impact of all of these appointments on the judiciary is also complicated to assess, because most of Biden’s appointees have been named to seats in blue states,1 and therefore are largely replacing other Democratic appointees. That doesn’t mean they won’t affect the courts, though — having more judges who are women, people of color and former public defenders will likely make a big difference for the outcomes of their cases, particularly in criminal cases and on issues like discrimination and voting rights.
Biden’s judges are breaking records on diversity
When it comes to judicial nominations, Biden and the Senate Democrats aren’t wasting any time. Perhaps spurred on by the very-real possibility that Democrats will lose control of the Senate in 2022, Biden has already nominated 61 judges to the lower courts, and 28 of those judges have been confirmed. According to data compiled by Brookings Institution fellow Russell Wheeler, that’s more nominees at this point in his term than any president since George W. Bush, the highest share of confirmed nominees than any president since Bill Clinton and the most appointments since Ronald Reagan.2
“ There were some progressives who were worried during the Trump years that Biden would be sleepy on [judicial appointments], but the Biden administration has made clear that this is a big priority,” said Marin K. Levy, a law professor at Duke University who studies the federal courts. “By and large, they have been moving on judicial nominations at a fast pace.”
Biden’s judges are also far more diverse than any previous president’s appointees. Most (71 percent) of the judges he’s successfully appointed to the federal bench are nonwhite, and the overwhelming majority (75 percent) are also women — far outstripping previous presidents, including his Democratic predecessors, on both metrics.
Biden’s judges also come from different professional backgrounds than previous presidents’ appointees. For instance, about half of Biden’s judges have ever held positions involving public defense or advocacy, and only a quarter have ever worked as prosecutors. As the chart below shows, both Obama and Trump were far likelier to appoint prosecutors and less likely to appoint judges with track records in public defense and advocacy.
These trends also lie squarely in line with promises that Biden made on the campaign trail and during his presidential transition. In response to pressure from progressives intent on court reform, he emphasized his commitment to appointing judges and justices with different kinds of life experiences and backgrounds, in an effort to make the judiciary more reflective of the people who appear every day in judges’ courtrooms. There’s plenty of research showing that having more women and people of color serve as judges can change outcomes in cases on gender discrimination, affirmative action, voting rights and more.
“The spotlight on judicial appointments has only been increasing over time,” said Gbemende Johnson, a political science professor at Hamilton College who studies judicial politics. “So part of what’s happening here is that a lot of people are watching Biden closely, to make sure he’s keeping those promises.”
More judges are coming from elite institutions
Biden’s judges are less diverse than previous presidents’ in one important way, though: They’re more likely to have attended elite educational institutions. According to our analysis, 29 percent of Biden’s appointees have an undergraduate degree from one of the eight Ivy League colleges and universities, and 61 percent went to a top-tier law school.3
That’s higher than other presidents’ appointees — as the table below shows, only 11 percent of Trump’s appointees attended an Ivy League school for their undergraduate degree and just over a third (34 percent) got their law degree at a top-ranked school. Obama was more likely to appoint judges with elite credentials than Trump but less likely than Biden has been so far.
This trend is particularly pronounced for judges who have been appointed to serve on the courts of appeals in the past year. Biden hasn’t had very many appellate vacancies to fill, but the judges who have been successfully confirmed are highly credentialed. More than half of his appellate appointees went to an Ivy League school for their undergraduate degree, and 78 percent attended a top-ranked law school.
When we spoke with experts about this trend, they floated a couple possible reasons. Chad Westerland, a political science professor at the University of Arizona who studies judicial politics, pointed out that clerking for a judge is a common stepping stone to becoming a judge. And those clerkships are easier to get when you attend a top-tier law school, which is, in turn, easier to get into if you attend a prestigious undergraduate institution.
Johnson also noted that while a fancy law degree is unlikely to change any senators’ minds about a judicial nominee, strong academic credentials could be seen as a bonus for candidates who have been traditionally underrepresented. “It does give you the opportunity to say, even if there was opposition, ‘Why are you opposing this person? They check every single box,’” she said.
But appointing more and more judges who attended the same handful of educational institutions is not necessarily a good thing, according to Christina Boyd, a political science professor at the University of Georgia who studies the courts. She told us it’s also important to have judges who attended schools that have a regional footprint, because that affects judges’ networks and connections and how they think about the law more broadly. “You could imagine people in those areas, where people don’t typically go to Ivy League schools, saying, ‘This is not representing us, we want judges who are like us,’” she said.
Biden is reshaping the courts in blue states — not red states
Each new judge is an important step in Biden’s quest to make his own mark on the courts, but in some ways, his impact has been fairly limited. Notably, according to Wheeler’s data, nearly all of his nominees so far are from blue states, which makes sense given that he’s mostly replacing judges appointed by other Democratic presidents who are choosing to retire.
He has flipped a couple of important seats, including replacing a Republican-appointed judge on the right-leaning 7th Circuit Court of Appeals with Candace Jackson-Akiwumi, a Black former federal defender. But for the most part, he’s making areas of the country that were already dominated by liberal judges even more liberal.
Take the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, a powerful, traditionally liberal circuit court in the New York area. Thanks to Trump’s appointments, Republican-appointed judges actually had a narrow advantage on the court when Trump left office, but Biden has already been able to appoint three of the 13 active judges on the circuit, shifting the balance of power back toward the liberal judges on the court. The 2nd Circuit now has six judges appointed by a Republican president and seven appointed by a Democrat, which means the chance of drawing a panel with two or three Democratic-appointed judges overseeing a case is higher than it was when Biden took office.
Biden’s task is likely going to be more difficult going forward, though. For one thing, Republican-appointed judges are unlikely to retire voluntarily on Biden’s watch, so there will always be fewer red-state vacancies for him to fill. Several experts also told us that judicial nominations are getting more polarized and contentious.
Until very recently, it was common for most judges to be confirmed unanimously, often without a formal vote. That’s no longer the case. “I’m confident that Biden will be the first president never to have a unanimously confirmed appointee to a district court or a court of appeals,” Westerland said. He thinks it’s still likely that Biden will be able to get his chosen nominees through, even if they’re from more conservative parts of the country, since Democrats have been voting in lock-step on his judges so far. But Boyd said that Biden might feel pressure to nominate more moderate judges, since Republicans are starting to raise stronger objections to his picks from red states. And that could be challenging, given his other priorities.
For now, though, Biden still has plenty of vacancies to fill, so confirming a raft of diverse, liberal judges is likely to remain a priority for his administration and Democrats in the Senate. With the midterms — and a possible loss of the Senate — looming on the horizon, his main enemy is time. “If Democrats lose the Senate, that’s going to be really tricky for shaping the bench, and that’s probably one of the reasons they’re moving so fast now,” Johnson said.
Bison calves. (photo: American Prairie Reserve/Great Falls Tribune)
A 2016 article in the Intermountain Journal of Sciences by James A. Bailey chronicles the observations.
The Crows were reported to kill “upwards of a thousand” bison in a day in 1824; meanwhile, George Catlin recorded 500 Shoshone tribal members slaughtered more than 1,400 in one day in 1832.
Yet as tribes and Montana begin to see more bison repopulate a state where they were once taken by the hundreds, two of the state’s top officials, along with heads of several key state agencies, want to put a stop to a private nonprofit organization’s attempt at placing small bison herds on lands where the animals once roamed.
American Prairie, formerly known as “American Prairie Reserve,” has purchased thousands of acres throughout Montana and has had grazing leases that have been tied to the lands for years. That’s why when it came to renewing those leases through the federal government’s Bureau of Land Management, the organization wasn’t expecting the furor that came from state leaders.
When the BLM’s own assessment determined that no significant harm would come from the grazing or leases, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, along with the leaders from the state’s department of agriculture and the Wildlife, Fish and Parks as well as Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, objected, urging the federal leaders to reconsider and hold more public meetings.
When the BLM, which had used a standard public comment period and public meeting, rebuffed the state leaders’ requests, Knudsen held his own public comment meeting and rejected an offer from American Prairie to meet, leading to an ongoing cold war in which the same leaders criticizing the nonprofit also refused to engage in conversation, leaving little more than an exchange of inflammatory letters and accusations that bison conservation will lead to the death of cattle ranching in central and northern Montana.
Gianforte and Knudsen were both contacted for the story, and neither office responded to requests for interviews.
The case of science vs. politics
When the BLM released its findings of no negative impacts for the grazing leases, that set into motion a concerted effort by state leaders to get the federal government to reconsider. At the heart of the argument is a disputed theory that federal grazing law did not allow for bison, rather only animals raised for commercial ranching, like cattle and sheep. Bison have also been raised in Montana for commercial production for decades.
Meanwhile, outside the legal process, ranchers opposed to American Prairie worry about escaped bison or the spread of disease. Yet scientists who study bison say that question — a recurring one in debates in Montana — has been largely settled in favor of the two animal species successfully living together without harming each other.
While the BLM and the federal government are standing by their public comment and input, as well as their findings regarding the grazing leases, the state may not be able to stop the federal permits, but it could make it more difficult to manage them.
Federal public lands have a checkerboard pattern of state lands intermixed among them. As a matter of law, the two are separate, but in practice, state governments often defer to the federal Bureau of Land Management to help manage lands that it technically owns on behalf of the state, but is surrounded — often like an island — in a sea of federal public land. That makes sense because animals don’t just graze according to land boundaries without fencing.
Yet separate management is one of the options the state of Montana said it would consider if the BLM doesn’t take more input. Technically, Montana could decide to wall off or separate its public grazing lands, but that would take thousands of dollars in fencing, something that, even with money from grazing leases, would likely not even pay for itself in the first 20-year lease. Moreover, the state would then have to decide how to manage its portion of the land, including access for any other leaseholders.
This is the first time some of the leases have come up with American Prairie as the leaseholder tied to the land.
Bovine vs. bison
While the conversation about bison and American Prairie has largely boiled down to bison conservation versus cattle ranching, the science on that is no longer in doubt.
Sam Fuhlendorf is the regents professor and Groendyke chair in wildlife conservation at Oklahoma State University. He works around the country with both conservation and ranching efforts, studying both animals.
He admits it’s hard to compare them because they’re very similar. They both forage and utilize similar food. One of the biggest differences, though, is “thermal stressors.” Cattle become stressed in high heat and chilly temperatures.
“Bison show extreme thermal tolerance,” Fuhlendorf said.
That means the blasting summer sun of the Montana prairie isn’t as big of a threat for bison, and neither is the prolonged cold of an intense winter.
Both can co-exist. Both can exist on the same land.
“They’re both big, bulk roughage eaters,” Fuhlendorf said.
As for managing bison versus managing cattle, Fuhlendorf, whose research is in range management, said it’s all a matter of managing. Bison range managers can be just as detrimental as cattle range operators. He said sometimes when a bison wallows in dust, people tend to view it as a spiritual experience, but when a bovine cow does it, it’s dirty. He said there’s nothing inherently bad or good about either, just small differences that depend on the management.
“Really, when we’re talking management, we’re talking about the middle,” Fuhlendorf said. “We want to make sure nothing is too heavily grazed and nothing is too little.”
He said the one difference in management is that bison, because they haven’t been domesticated like cattle, can get a reputation of being harder to handle.
“There’s nothing magically good or evil about bison, though,” Fuhlendorf said. “The most important decision is how many animals will be out there. For bison – if a bison can get out, it will. But the key is not making them want to get out of wherever they are.”
As for the politics of bison in Montana, that’s something that not even studying the animals for decades has given him a clear handle on. A sign that’s popped up throughout central and northern Montana that says, “Save the Cowboy, Stop APR,” is one indicator of the tensions.
“Most of it is a red herring,” Fuhlendorf said. “At Wichita Mountain (cattle and bison) are in the same pasture all the time and none of the ranchers are troubled by the connection. Ranchers in quite a few other states just don’t have a problem.
“Ranchers, by nature, are conservative. But even if they wouldn’t do something with their property, they understand the rights of others because of private property.”
Follow the law
One thing that both sides agree on: the other side is not following the law.
In Gianforte’s letter to the federal agency, he said the BLM lacks the authority to issue a grazing permit for “domestic indigenous animals.” The governor also argues that using the grazing permits for “non-production-oriented, wildlife management” would rob other ranchers of economic opportunities.
Finally, Gianforte criticizes the BLM in a September letter for holding a public hearing session via remote meeting “in the middle of a summer afternoon when the vast majority of those affected were trying to wrest their livelihoods from a devastating drought.”
Pete Geddes, American Prairie’s vice president, told the Daily Montanan he’s still surprised by the amount of public rebuke they’ve gotten. That includes a public campaign complete with yard signs and banners that advocates ending APR. And Geddes says American Prairie used a conservative playbook by buying their own private property for grazing bison. And when it comes to Montana, he is still flummoxed by the opposition from Lewistown legislator Dan Bartels who was unsuccessful in an attempt to pass legislation that would have prohibited nonprofits from acquiring land — an idea that riled even some conservative ranchers in the area.
“We’re building a National Discovery Center in downtown Lewistown and creating jobs and tourism there. I would think he’d be interested in employees and in private land,” Geddes said.
Gianforte’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation also objected during the federal open commenting period, noting that it has roughly 5,000 acres of the 155,000 acres of BLM and private land in question. Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks division added a three-page letter of concerns, including concerns about transmitting disease and whether cattle and bison can co-exist. Two additional letters were submitted by the state, including the Department of Livestock and the Department of Agriculture, which largely restate the same objections, but bring the total number of pages opposing American Prairie to more than 30.
In a letter, AG Knudsen accuses the BLM of creating a new term not found in the Taylor Grazing Act.
“Now they’ve conjured a new classification — indigenous livestock — and insist that bison fit inside,” Knudsen said. “The law requires more than clever linguistic re-jiggering. APR doubtlessly paid a lot for the legal brain that suggested, ‘We only need to stop calling bison non-livestock and call them indigenous livestock.’”
He also accused the BLM of not adequately calculating the cost of allowing American Prairie bison to graze on federal and state lands, saying its analysis failed to recognize the negative impacts to ranchers and farmers.
“APR’s mission is to displace Northeastern Montana’s livestock industry and replace it with a large outdoor zoo,” Knudsen said. “APR’s my-way-or-the-highway approach is nothing more than a reflexive threat to subject other permits to burdensome administrative protests and is, to be polite, unneighborly. No wonder APR has generated intense local opposition to its efforts.”
But being neighborly, American Prairie contends, is a two-way street. They confirmed that they’ve reached out to both Gianforte and Knudsen, inviting them to see their operations, to ask questions and to communicate. They said that neither has ever visited or accepted an invitation.
“The governor is very interested in public access and economic development and we are, too,” Geddes said. “In fact, we’d like to believe we’re partners. We’ve created high-paying jobs. We’ve opened more area for engaging in Montana’s outdoors. He has a standing invitation to visit.”
The Daily Montanan sent several requests in the past month to talk to both the governor and the attorney general about their actions involving American Prairie and the battle overgrazing. Neither office responded.
Geddes points out that American Prairie is so concerned about its neighbors that when it first set up operations, it had good-neighbor agreements with landowners surrounding it, saying that if APR didn’t manage to recapture an escaped animal off its property within 24 hours, the other property owner could shoot it. Never once has that happened, he said, because they try to respond immediately and have on-site managers.
He said it’s important to know that landowners who border American Prairie’s borders were not among those chiefly concerned with the permit.
“Once we’re people in the neighborhood, we’re not such a concern,” Geddes said. “We’re not going anywhere. We’re a Montana-led, Montana-based operation, and our intent is to be a really good neighbor.”
When Knudsen held a forum in Malta, according to the Glasgow Courier, he admitted that the BLM fulfilled its obligation for public comment, but claimed it was dominated by out-of-state interests. Knudsen also told audience members he was surprised that no one from APR showed up to the meeting he called.
However, officials at APR said they were not invited to the meeting and pointed out that five days before the meeting, the nonprofit organization sent a four-page letter outlining their position, including adding jobs and increasing public access. The letter offers to meet to discuss issues and also pointed out, “The Bureau of Land Management can issue grazing permits or leases and modify existing permits to substitute many different types of livestock for cattle, including bison. It has done this for several decades across the West.”
American Prairie also commissioned John D. Leshy and Justin Pidot to examine the legal issue for the organization and to examine the legal concerns raised by the state.
Leshy served as Solicitor General of the Department of the Interior from 1993-2001 and was a former law professor at the University of California. As cliché as it may sound, he literally wrote the book on public land law, “Federal Public Land and Resources Law,” which has been through seven editions.
Leshy and Pidot, a law professor at the University of Arizona, concluded that current laws do not define the animals that may or may not qualify for grazing permits, including cattle or bison and that the mixed-use nature of the BLM means that some land should be used for grazing, but it doesn’t make the determination of what kind of grazing, leaving it to department officials.
It points out that Montana and Knudsen have used old or overturned court decisions.
“Congress has made the Secretary (of the Interior) the landlord of the public range and basically made the grant of grazing privileges discretionary,” the analysis said. “(The) definition of ‘multiple use’ explicitly proves that a ‘range’ or livestock grazing is just one of many uses and values to be served by the public lands, along with such things as ‘wildlife’ and ‘natural scenic, scientific and historical values.’”
Leshy and Pidot fire back that even Montana law defines “livestock” to include bison.
They point out that in the BLM’s final environmental impact statement, which was revised in 2016, that “bison in private ownership are considered livestock.”
“The primary test in making this distinction is whether or not the animal qualifies as an applicant under the requirements of the grazing regulations,” the two legal scholars wrote. “The grazing regulations define qualified applicants and apply equally to all qualified applicants, regardless of class of livestock.”
Keisha Richardson, a 15-year Kellogg employee, picketing outside the cereal maker's headquarters as workers remain on strike in Battle Creek, Michigan. (photo: Emily Elconin/Reuters)
Strike, which began in October, expected to continue as workers seek significant raises, saying they work 80-hour weeks
The Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) International Union said an overwhelming majority of workers had voted down the five-year offer.
The decision follows months of bitter disagreement between the company and the union. The rejected offer would have provided cost of living adjustments in the later years of the deal and preserved the workers’ current healthcare benefits. But workers say they deserve significant raises because they routinely work more than 80 hours a week, and they kept the plants running throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Employees have been striking since 5 October at plants in Michigan, Nebraska and Pennsylvania and Tennessee. They make all of the company’s well-known brands of cereal, including Apple Jacks and Frosted Flakes. That strike is expected to continue.
“The members have spoken. The strike continues,” the union president, Anthony Shelton, said. “The International Union will continue to provide full support to our striking Kellogg’s members.”
Workers say they are also protesting planned job cuts and offshoring, and a proposed two-tier system that gives newer workers at the plants less pay and fewer benefits. Speaking to the Guardian in October, Trevor Bidelman, president of BCTGM Local3G and a fourth-generation employee at the Kellogg plant in Battle Creek, Michigan, described it as a “fight for our future”.
“This is after just one year ago, we were hailed as heroes, as we worked through the pandemic, seven days a week, 16 hours a day. Now apparently, we are no longer heroes,” said Bidelman. “We don’t have weekends, really. We just work seven days a week, sometimes 100 to 130 days in a row. For 28 days, the machines run, then rest three days for cleaning. They don’t even treat us as well as they do their machinery.”
Kellogg said it would now move forward with plans to start hiring permanent replacements for the striking workers. The company has already been using salaried employees and outside workers to keep the plants operating during the strike.
“While certainly not the result we had hoped for, we must take the necessary steps to ensure business continuity,” said Chris Hood, president of Kellogg North America. “We have an obligation to our customers and consumers to continue to provide the cereals that they know and love.”
The Rutgers University professor Todd Vachon, who teaches classes about labor relations, said he was not sure the company would be able to hire enough workers to replace the ones who are out on strike in the current economy, and Kellogg may have a hard time finding people willing to cross a picket line.
“By voting ‘no’, the workers are making a strong statement that they are not satisfied by the agreement, but they are also signaling they believe they have the leverage that’s needed to win more,” Vachon said.
Earlier this year, about 600 food workers also went on strike at a Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas, and 1,000 others walked off the job at five Nabisco plants across the US. In another recent strike, over 10,000 Deere workers secured 10% raises and improved benefits but those gains came after the workers remained on strike for a month and rejected two offers from the company.
The offer that Kellogg workers rejected was the first one they have voted on since the strike began.
Israeli soldiers stand on guard by the fence along the Gaza Strip near Moshav Netiv HaAsara in southern Israel. (photo: Menahem Kahana/AFP)
Israeli defence minister says the ‘technologically advanced project’ includes hundreds of cameras, radar and other sensors over a stretch of 65km.
Israel went public with the project, which also includes an above-ground fence, a naval barrier, radar systems and command and control rooms, in 2016.
“The barrier, which is an innovative and technologically advanced project, deprives Hamas of one of the capabilities it tried to develop,” Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz said, according to a ministry statement.
“[It] places an ‘iron wall’, sensors and concrete between the terror organisation and the residents of Israel’s south,” he said of the project, which beefs up an existing fence.
The ministry said the barrier, which includes hundreds of cameras, radar and other sensors, spans 65km (40 miles) and 140,000 tonnes of iron and steel were used in its construction, which took three-and-a-half years to complete.
It said the project’s “smart fence” is more than 6 metres (20 feet) high and its maritime barrier includes means to detect infiltration by sea and a remote-controlled weapons system. The ministry did not disclose the depth of the underground wall.
Gaza also has a 14km (8.7 miles) long border with Egypt, which has also clamped down on crossings, citing security concerns. Since 2013, Egyptian forces have demolished smuggling tunnels while Hamas, on its side, has stepped up patrols.
Iron Dome interceptors
Israel and Hamas have fought four wars since the group seized control of the coastal Gaza Strip in 2007 from forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
In May, an 11-day Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip killed more than 260 Palestinians, including 66 children, and wounded more than 1,900 people, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
At least 12 people, including three foreign workers and two children, were killed in Israel by rockets fired by Hamas and other armed groups from Gaza during the same period.
Israel deployed its Iron Dome interceptors against the rockets and carried out extensive air attacks on Gaza. Hamas and other armed groups fired more than 4,300 rockets at Israel.
Coral reef. (photo: Neal Wilson/Getty Images)
Reefs from Seychelles to South Africa may become functionally extinct due to global heating and overfishing, study finds.
From Seychelles to the Delagoa region off the coast of Mozambique and South Africa, the reef systems are at risk of becoming functionally extinct by the 2070s, with a huge loss of biodiversity, and threatening the livelihoods and food sources for hundreds of thousands of people.
The study, published today in the journal Nature Sustainability, examined coral reefs in 10 countries around the western Indian ocean. It analysed the health of 11 sub-regions using the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list of ecosystems framework, akin to the method used to examine a plant or animal’s risk of extinction.
The assessment found reefs in island nations in particular were highly threatened due to rising water temperatures driven by global heating, which is making bleaching events – when corals expel algae living in their tissue, causing them to turn completely white – more common. Reefs in eastern and southern Madagascar, the Comoros and Mascarene Islands were all classified as critically endangered.
Reefs in north Seychelles and along the entire east African coast were classified as vulnerable to collapse due to overfishing – especially of top predators – which is altering their ecology and promoting a build-up of different algae that can smother coral.
David Obura, chair of the IUCN corals group, who led the study, said that while the global decline of coral reefs has been established for some time, region-specific assessments of specific regions provided greater clarity about the causes and the extent of the damage.
“The most urgent threat is from climate change up to 50 years from now. But while we estimate 50 years into the future, whether we can meet the 1.5C [rise] future or not depends on what we do in the next 10 years. So, it’s really a 10-year horizon that we have to be concerned about,” he said.
“The collapse of a reef means it becomes functionally extinct as a reef system. You might still find some species there but they won’t be able to construct a reef any more. All of the services we get – coastal protection from sea-level rise, tourism, fisheries, especially for low-income households and communities – are at risk. The tourism sector is huge in east Africa and it depends on heathy reefs.”
Since the 1950s, the world’s coral reef cover has halved due to global heating, overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction. The decline of the ecosystems, which are vital nurseries for juvenile fish globally, is expected to continue as the climate continues to heat.
Mishal Gudka, a senior scientist at Cordio East Africa and a co-author of the study, said their assessment detected overfishing of top predators on all the reefs from which there was data.
“These results highlight the need to improve local fisheries management to ensure the health of reef systems and secure sustainable fish stocks, which support jobs for a quarter of a million people in the region,” Gudka said.
Alongside cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, Obura said better enforcement of fishery regulations and greater involvement of local communities in reef management could help maintain their survival.
“This assessment reaffirms the urgency of the interlinked climate and biodiversity crises addressed by Cop26 last month in Glasgow, and Cop15 [biodiversity summit] in a few months in Kunming. We need to take decisive action to address both global threats to corals from climate change, and local ones, such as overfishing,” he said.
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